Couples Cruising

You, Me, and the Open Sea

How to make the most of your cruise for two.

By Sherri Eisenberg

Cruising can be many things to different people. Travel with relatives, and it’s the perfect kid-friendly family reunion with water slides and all-ages stage shows. Travel with friends, and it’s a boisterous floating celebration with round after round of cocktails and bawdy late-night comedy acts.

When you’re at sea with your sweetie, however, you want to make sure that you focus on ways to make it feel different than other trips — more romantic, more memorable, more like it’s just the two of you and the open sea. Here are some ways to make the rest of the passengers seem to disappear (at least for a while) and to truly enjoy your time for two.

Order Room Service

Just about every cruise line offers some sort of room service menu, but they vary widely. Some have a limited list of dishes served within limited hours and with additional fees that start to add up if you do it every day. But many of the luxury lines (including Crystal Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Seabourn, and Silversea Cruises) will serve you dinner in your suite, course by course straight from the dining room menu at no additional charge.
Crystal also serves dishes from its specialty Japanese and Italian restaurants, and (if you’re in an upper-level suite) Oceania Cruises will serve dishes from its specialty restaurants as well. Royal Caribbean International’s new Anthem of the Seas will deliver, for a fee, some dishes from celebrity chef Michael Schwartz’s new gastro pub.

Icing on the Cake: Ask for dinner on your balcony for the perfect seaside table for two. Chances are everyone else will be at dinner, so you’ll only hear each other and the crashing of the waves. For a fee, Princess Cruises offers its four-course “Ultimate Balcony Dinner,” complete with flowers, your beverage of choice, hors d’oeuvres, and lobster and steak.

Book a Couples’ Massage

If a spa treatment is the ultimate indulgence at sea, then a treatment together is shared decadence. Sure, you’ll probably be face-down on a bed, zoning out, rather than chatting, but when it’s over you’ll be together and can spend time in the spa’s water treatment area, which usually has heated lounge….